Sir, - Rev Peter O'Callaghan (January 6th) quotes the secondcentury writer Tertullian in support of his claim that all abortion, without exception, is murder. Abortion is certainly killing human life, but the moral problem is to discern just when any act of killing can be labelled murder and therefore immoral. If it is sufficient to quote an ancient writer to back up the claim, the question remains: what criteria to use to discover whether or not the author is talking nonsense. With the deepest apologies to women, and with the utmost sense of shame for what the Christian Church allowed to be preached in its name, I recall the following examples (to remind us that not every word of popes, saints, mystics or theologians is a word of God):1. St Clement of Alexandria (died 220): "A woman should cover her head with shame at the thought that she is a woman."2. Tertullian (d. 220): "The judgment of God upon the female sex endures to this day, and with it inevitably endures their position of criminal at the bar of justice. Women are the gateway of the devil."3. St John Chrysostom (d. 407): "Woman is a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil . . . Among all savage beasts none is found so harmful as woman."4. St Jerome (d. 430): "Women are the gate of hell."5. St Augustine (d. 420): "Women are not made in the image of God."6. Pope St Gregory the Great (d. 604): "Woman is slow in understanding, and her unstable and naive mind renders her by way of natural weakness to the necessity of a strong hand in her husband.
Her use is twofold: animal sex and motherhood."7. St John Damascene (d. 750): "Woman is a sick she-ass . . . a hideous tape-worm . . .
the advance post of hell."8. St Bernard of Clairveaux (d. 1153): "There are two things which defile and ruin religious: familiarity with women and daintiness with food."9. St Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274): "Woman is an . . . incomplete being . . . a misbegotten male. It is unchallengeable that woman is destined to live under man's influence and has no authority . . ."10. Pope John XII (d. 1334): "Woman is more bitter than death."11. Constitutions of a male religious order, 1945: "What straw gains by fire is what a male religious gains by conversation with women."Officially the Church still has not said "Sorry." - Yours, etc.,(Fr) Sean Fagan S.M.,Mount St Mary's,Milltown,Dublin 14.